UofL celebrates cybersecurity education grant

Six professors from the J.B. Speed School of Engineering, the College of Arts & Sciences and the College of Business sliced up some cake at a recent meeting to discuss two UofL cybersecurity programs funded by a new $580,000 grant from the National Security Agency. The programs will be offered beginning in the spring 2018 semester and are aimed at reaching working professionals and members of the law enforcement community.

One program will teach cybersecurity measures to public safety employees and another will use common off-the-shelf hardware and software to design new cybersecurity teaching methods. They will be offered online and on-campus through occasional Saturday class meetings.

The interdisciplinary programs are an extension of the University of Louisville Cyber Security Initiative. In 2014, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the National Security Agency designated UofL as a National Center of Academic Excellence in Cyber Defense Education (CAE-CDE); that designation was recently extended through 2019.

“The University of Louisville offers related undergraduate degrees in criminal justice, computer information systems with a concentration in information security and a graduate certificate in cybersecurity that is available online,” said Adel Elmaghraby, professor and chair of the Speed School’s computer engineering and computer science departments, who is principal investigator on the grant.

Janet Cappiello covers the College of Business, the J.B. Speed School of Engineering, the College of Education and Human Development, the School of Interdisciplinary and Graduate Studies, Sustainability Council and military initiatives for the Office of Communications and Marketing. She has more than 30 years’ experience in journalism, including working for The Associated Press and magazines such as Vegetarian Times and Sustainability: The Journal of Record. She has been at UofL since March 2014.